Limestone Gulch, White Mountains National Recreation Area: Natural, Cultural, and Biological Karst Reconnaissance, 2002-2005

This report outlines the findings of a natural, biological and cultural survey of karstic features in the Limestone Gulch area of the White Mountains National Recreation Area (WMNRA), managed by the Bureau of Land Management – Fairbanks District Office (BLM). The WMNRA is a nearly 1 million acre contiguous land unit located in central-eastern interior Alaska, northeast of the city of Fairbanks (Figure 1). The survey occurred during the summer months of 2002 through 2005, and was prompted by an impromptu discovery of a bison bone inside of a small cave in the Limestone Gulch area of the WMNRA in the spring of 2001 (Figure 2). Radiocarbon analysis on the bone returned an assay around 13,000 before present, dating to the late Pleistocene epoch.